I left work early [scheduled] and stopped by the post office on the way home. I was a bit disappointed – I was hoping that a gift card that I had ordered would be amongst the mail. I should’ve known better than to expect that to happen, though. My late father worked for the USPS for some 16+ years but the present day USPS is not something he would recognize in my opinion.
As has been announced, the USPS is requesting a rate hike – again:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 6, 2010
July 6, 2010
Postal Service Proposes Price Changes
New Forever Stamp Images Coming This Fall
I’m opposed to any price increases for the USPS. My reason is that they do not currently provide the level of service that I expect. Whenever I go to the post office locations in Jackson, it rarely fails to happen that I find myself waiting in a line to reach a window clerk and that usually, although there are multiple window stations available, rarely are all of them open and a clerk actually there working – waiting on customers. Instead, I find myself waiting in a line of 10-15 people, sometimes more than that and I spend 15 or more minutes waiting in that line just to spend less than another 5 face to face with the window clerk once I’ve reached him or her.
The reason that this situation happens is simply because the individual in charge of scheduling wants to keep the number of window clerks on duty to a minimum so as not to have to pay any more of them than necessary. He or she doesn’t care that customers’ time is wasted waiting in line and that they are unhappy and disgusted at having to wait in line.
I have personally seen, at the post office where I receive my mail, that they will have only one window clerk on duty when there is no excuse for this. It’s not lunchtime – it’s 10:00 AM or it’s 2:30 PM. Why aren’t the others all out at their window stations working – waiting on customers?!
Whenever I have a flat rate package to go out, it almost always has to be taken to the window and handed to a clerk since I usually have the regular postage stamp on it. The reason behind this is that an item weighing more than 13 ounces and bearing a regular postage stamp has to be handed to a postal employee. This policy was put into place after 9/11/2001.
Now do the USPS bureaucrats who thought up this policy really believe that a terrorist is going to:
1. Put his or her name and return address on a package – whether it weighs 13 ounces or more – in the first place?
2. Stand in line to go and hand the package to a human window clerk simply because it weighs 13 ounces or more since the retail window area has security cameras that will capture their picture?
Evidently the USPS bureaucrats seem to think so! This means that when I have a package to send out to a friend and I have it 100% ready to go – packaged up, sealed, my name and return address, the name and address of the person it’s going to and the flat rate stamp on it, I can’t just go toss it in to the collection bin inside the USPS. No! I have to go and wait in line to reach a human window clerk and spend maybe a minute with him or her just so that I can hand the package to a clerk and have them accept it.
I have, in the past, given my packages to route carriers. However, after an experience earlier this year where a package I sent out that way was returned to me – a month later – with stickers all over it saying it had been rejected because of the requirement that it be handed to a postal employee and that I hadn’t done that.
I knew that I had done this – I had handed it to a route carrier. This meant that at my next opportunity, I had to go to the post office and stand in line to reach a clerk and protest that I had given it to a postal employee – after all, if a route carrier isn’t a postal employee, then what is he or she?! I was told that if I gave it to him or her on a Saturday [which I did] that’s what caused the foul-up. This particular post office doesn’t have window service on Saturday, so the clerks aren’t there. Therefore, there was no one for the route carrier to bring the package to when he [in this case] returned to the post office after delivering their route of mail. He apparently tossed it into a collection bin and didn’t tell anyone else that he had accepted it while out on his route. So, it was rejected and sent back to me – a month later!
Since having that experience, I have gone to the trouble of taking packages of this type to the post office, standing in line and waiting to reach a window clerk and then standing there watching while they apply the cancellations so that those working in the back sorting and getting the mail routed to go out will know and recognize that someone accepted it and won’t kick it back at me.
This is why I am opposed to any price increases for the USPS – because of the unacceptable level of service provided by the USPS.
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